Digital Audio Disc Corporation history

James T. Russell was born in Bremerton, Washington in 1931.

After first using ebonite, Berliner soon switched over to shellac as the material for his records, and this continued to be used for the production of 78 r.p.m. records until the introduction of the LP (Long Play record) in 1948.

In 1953, Russell earned his Bachelor degree in physics and graduated from Reed College in Portland.

The story of the CD started way back in 1957 with experiments involving the rudimentary video disc by the Italian Antonio Rubbiani, that stimulated an entire generation of scientists to think along the lines of digital technology.

In 1965, the Ohio-based Battelle Memorial Institute opened its Pacific Northwest Laboratory in Richland, to took over management of Hanford’s lab, and James Russell joined the effort as Senior Scientist.

In 1971, Eli S. Jacobs, a New York venture capitalist, pioneered the commercialization by forming Digital Recording Corporation to further enhance the product for the consumer video market, and hired Russell and a team of technicians to come up with a video disk.

In 1974 Digital Recording Corporation announced an optical digital television recording and playback machine, the first device to digitize a color image, at a Chicago trade show.

Philips Electronics representatives visited Russell’s Battelle lab in the summer of 1975, and they discounted the entire premise of his work. "They said: It’s all very well for data storage, but you can’t do that for video or audio." recalled Russell.

The name for the project (decided in 1977), Compact Disc Project, was chosen by Philips with the hope that it would bring to peoples’ minds, the Compact Cassette’s success.

However, in 1978, the project took off on a more serious note and Philips launched the Compact Disc Project.

In the year 1980, Philips and Sony, in general acceptance of certain specifications regarding the CDs, brought out the Red Book.

"The first test CD was pressed in Hannover, Germany by the Polydor Pressing Operations plant in 1981.

Eventually the two companies came together and CDs were officially launched as a viable format in 1982.

The Yellow Book of standards released in 1983 comprised of the basis of the Compact Disc-Recordable (CD-R).

The first Macintosh was introduced on January 24, 1984, by Steve Jobs and it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature two … Keep Reading

The first major artist to have his entire catalogue converted to CD was David Bowie, whose 15 studio albums were made available by RCA in February 1985, along with four Greatest Hits albums.

It’s argued that the last 8-track tape ever released by a major label was Fleetwood Mac’s Greatest Hits, released in November of 1988 by Warner Records—perhaps a sign that we’d never be going back to 8-tracks again?

After unsuccessful attempts to tax blank tapes, the DAT (digital audio tape) Bill was introduced in 1989, which restricted the amount of tapes consumers could by and prevented them from making copies of copies, aka the SCMS system.

In 1991 the Audio Home Recording Act was introduced, which collected tax from media and record makers and distributed it back to labels.

Time-Warner and other disc manufacturers settled with the Optical Recording Corporation in 1992, paying $30 million for patent infringement.

The next major landmark was in the year 1995, when Sony initiated a move to standardise Digital Versatile Discs (DVDs), a plan that they had had in the pipeline.

Diskette’s most notable release was Brian Eno’s 1996 album Generative Music I, released through Opal Music.

To date, the biggest selling CD (as opposed to the biggest selling title) is Beatles “1”, released in November 2000, with worldwide sales of 30 million discs

The release of the iPhone in 2007 is what really caused streaming and internet radios popularity to skyrocket.

For this breakthrough innovation, Philips received the IEEE milestone award in 2009.

In January of 2015, the CD was awarded as the most valued Philips innovation, voted by readers of the Eindhovens Dagblad and listeners of Omroep Brabant, as well as by Philips Research employees.

These days tapes certainly aren’t our main mode of listening, but the industry is still active—In 2016, cassette sales grew by 74% from the previous year.

Even though Discog’s 2017 mid-year report cites vinyl as the physical format showing the biggest growth, CDs have seen their own growth in sales with an increase of 23.23% on the used market.